"BOSTON -- Last year's record-breaking drought across the Amazon Basin has turned nearly a million square miles of green rainforest to brown, finds a new mapping study based on NASA satellite data.

'The greenness levels of Amazonian vegetation, a measure of its health, decreased dramatically over an area more than three and one-half times the size of Texas,' said Liang Xu, the study's lead author.

'It did not recover to normal levels, even after the drought ended in late October 2010,' said Xu, who is with Boston University's Climate and Vegetation Research Group in the Department of Geography and Environment."
Environment News Service had the story March 31, 2011.[2]